Day 16: Rape story, Marion festival advance

On my way into work, I saw the budget that Derek had emailed out. He had me down to cover the increase in rapes in San Marcos, and wanted me to do a story on what women could do to prevent rape and what the reason is for the increase.

My drive down Highway 123, I thought about my story. I didn’t really like the way it was framed. The majority of rapes are committed by people the victim knows, so the only practical advice is don’t hang around creepy people? That sounds like horrible and insensitive advice to me too. The stereotypical advice like don’t wear short skirts, don’t walk alone at night and whatnot are kind of common sense, but they also sort of victim blame, and anyone that reads this article and sees stuff like that who has been raped may feel like they were somewhat at fault.

This story would have to be very delicately framed to avoid victim blaming or just downright stupid advice. Derek mentioned in the budget about self-defense classes, and I did think that sounded like a good idea. I decided to instead frame this part of the story as someone who wants to empower themselves in case they ever find themselves in a situation such as that. I also thought it would be a good idea to include where women could turn to who have been raped, and what their options are. I knew it would be a heavy article.

I got into work and settled into my desk. I felt rather refreshed, very awake. Not long after I settled in, Derek sent me another email about the story with more details. I dived into my notepad and started planning my interview questions for Morgan Ash, the city’s Public Information Officer. As I was finishing my questions, Felicia called me over and asked if I could do an advance on this event that was happening in Marion. It was a sausage festival, I believe.

I prepared some quick questions for the contact that Felicia gave me, and then gave the lady a call. Unfortunately, I just got a voicemail. I let Felicia know. She told me that she had told the lady not to play phone tag with me and that she would likely be calling very soon. I decided to hold off on calling Morgan for the rape interview, because the Marion festival was priority in getting flushed out over the rape story, and I didn’t want to miss the festival contact’s call.

It was one of them waiting games at this point. I can’t really remember what I did, truthfully. I might have poked around my email a bit. Around 1:00pm-ish, the festival lady called me back. The interview with her went very well. After her interview, I wrote up a story. Normally I would email Derek my story for final approval before it goes into the editorial drive, but since Felicia was the one that asked me to write the story, I decided to email her. I asked if it sounded okay and said if she thinks I’m missing anything I could call the contact back.

Felica praised how quickly I turned the story. After she read it, she called me over and went over it with me. She gave me some really fantastic advice on writing it and arranging the details in it. I had a more newsy lead, but she told me that since this festival was a tradition and a fun, family event that a more…trying to think of the word…I guess, active lead that draws people in. I could see what she was saying and liked the lead that she had come up with. She also suggested rearranging some of the details. After talking with her, I did need to contact the source back to find out why they changed locations for where they usually hold it and how much barbecue plates cost. Even though this was a fairly short advance, I feel like I learned quite a bit with it!

After the Marion festival story was done, it was onto the Rape story.

I called Morgan and got her right there. I explained the story and asked if I could interview her. The interview with her went…ehhhh. She tried to heavily play down the increase in rape. On one had, I totally understood where she was coming from. Seguin actually only had five more rapes in the first six-months of 2015 when compared to the first six-months of 2014, which really isn’t that much. Due to the small sample size, it showed the city had a 56 percent increase. But I don’t know, some of the ways that she was playing it down were rather unrealistic. She had said that just because they were reported didn’t mean they actually occurred and so it’s possible that number could end up being lower. An example she gave was that a neighbor could look from her yard into another neighbor’s bedroom and see them having sex, but for some reason think one of them is being raped and call the police. She said in this way it would be factored into the number. That example felt so absurd to me. I don’t know, I imagine unless you’re into some kind of BDSM type thing, a couple having sex probably won’t look like someone’s being raped.

Anyway, her interview was pretty much not useable. She did give me the contact information for Victor Pacheco, the captain of operations with the Seguin Police Department, and said that he could likely better answer my questions. She asked for my email address too so that she could give him a heads up that I would be calling. I don’t have a Seguin Gazette email, I use my Texas State one, so I gave her that one. When she heard the txstate.edu part, she sounded a little confused and asked if I was at school. I told her that I was the Gazette’s intern. When she heard that she sounded a bit sympathetic with the tough story that I was writing and sounded like she really wanted to help me out. I guess I appreciated that haha.

I gave Pacheco a call and he answered, but he said that he was in the middle of a meeting at that moment and would have to call me back. So, I gave him my Seguin office number and awaited his call.

While I waited, I transcribed Morgan’s interview. Even though I didn’t think it was really useable, I figured that there could be something possibly in there. After an hour passed, I was worried that Pacheco might have forgotten about me. He had originally said that his meeting would only take about ten or fifteen minutes. So, I sent him an email with my contact information. Public officials in Seguin get their emails right to their phones, so I figured that it would reach him pretty quickly if he did forget.

About fifteen minutes after that he called me back. The interview with him actually went really well. I got a lot of details from him. I received a more realistic reason for the increase, that due to programs in the community people were feeling more comfortable with coming forward to report rape. So it wasn’t necessarily an increase in rapes, but an increase of reports in his opinion. It still down-played the increase, but this explanation did seem reasonable.

After his interview, I transcribed it and set out to writing. It was nearing 6:00pm, and I knew that I would likely have to finish this story up tomorrow. I was only half-way done with it. It would probably have to be pushed into the following week as well. The person that I really needed to talk to was the Crime Victim Liaison with the SPD, as they were the best authority on this topic. Unfortunately, the city was between Liaisons and the new one didn’t start until Monday. Pacheco gave me some great information, but for some of my questions he also pointed me to the Liaison, so I knew I really needed them.

Derek was wanting to wrap up the office so he asked if I could wrap things up. I was at a good stopping point anyway, so I gathered my things and headed out for the day.